A recent poll conducted by the University of Maryland asked if the United States should be officially declared a Christian nation. 78% of Republicans who are evangelical or "born-again" Christians are in favor of declaring America is a Christian nation. 52% of Democrats who are evangelical or "born-again" Christians are also in favor of officially having the United States declared a Christian nation.
Many people in the political/religious left believe that if the US was actually declared a Christian nation, the US would then have to start being more humane and caring. This belief is based on their false, but widespread and popular, impression of Jesus being a compassionate and caring man/rabbi/deity. It conveniently ignores the cruelty promoted by Jesus, such as believe or burn in hell for eternity, and only focuses on the "nice" things the anonymous authors of the Christian gospels wrote about Jesus.
This religious left article states:
"If 'America' truly became Christian, we'd have to address the issue of hunger on the one hand and extreme wealth on the other. We'd have to deal with the fact (as Richard Wolff argues in the video above) that the tradition in question favors socialism rather than capitalism. We'd be forced to recognize the truth of liberation theology."
The author of the article goes on to define "liberation theology" as, "reflection on the following of Christ from the viewpoint of the world's poor and oppressed." He also states that Jesus belonged to the world's poor and oppressed.
Believing that Jesus actually existed as a man can only be done if you put a lot of credence and unearned trust in the anonymous authors of the Christian gospels. There are no contemporaries of Jesus who ever wrote anything about him (Josephus, a Jewish leader in the Jewish-Roman Wars who surrendered to the Romans and cooperated with them, mentions Jesus twice in his Antiquities of the Jews, but he was not a contemporary of Jesus, having been born in 37 CE and died in 100 CE. He also wrote in the same work that Abraham taught science to the ancient Egyptians who then taught it to the ancient Greeks!). The Romans left no written account of Jesus or the alleged trial and crucifixion of Jesus, nor did they leave a record of the incredible claim in Matthew 27:50-53 which, if true, would definitely have been recorded, that of dead people in cemeteries around Jerusalem coming back to life when Jesus died on a Friday afternoon, hanging out at their graves until the following Sunday morning when Jesus also came back to life at which time the Bible zombies all went into Jerusalem and "appeared unto many."(It's also interesting to note that according to the Talmud, the rabbis claim the Jews tried and executed Jesus, not the Romans. The Talmud claims Jesus was killed by stoning and then his body was hung on a tree until sundown. An interesting, informative and well documented book on this is Jesus in the Talmud by Peter Schafer.)
Liberation theology is a form of Christian theology. Christian theology is based on man-made irrational myths. Thomas Paine did a great job of shinning the light of our gift from God of innate reason on Christian theology. In The Age of Reason he wrote:
"The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing."
The religious left is correct in asserting that the early Christians practiced a form of communism. Acts 4:34 - 5:11 tells the story of the early Christians selling their homes and real estate and giving the money to Peter and the apostles which was then allegedly divided among the Christians who needed it. As the story goes, one Christian couple sold their home but did not give all of the proceeds to Peter and the apostles. This, allegedly, angered God and, like the NKVD/KGB/Communist China secret police, God killed the dissidents. This is a part of the Christian Bible the religious right ignores.
The religious left likes to focus on Bible content like the above promotion of Communism, quotes such as "blessed are the peacemakers" (which reminds me of Monty Python's outstanding film Life of Brian and the part where a man standing at the back of the crowd listening to Jesus' sermon on the mount/beatitudes thought Jesus said "blessed are the cheesemakers" and that he didn't mean it should be taken literally as it includes all manufacturers of dairy products) and "as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise". However, there are other quotes the anonymous authors of the Christian gospels attributed to Jesus, which the religious left likes to ignore.
Shortly after the beatitudes, Jesus is making it clear he is not doing away with the ungodly and cruel Hebrew Bible and its brutal commands (this would be because, IF Jesus really did exist as a mere man, he was a religious/superstitious Jew who falsely believed the Hebrew Bible is the Word of God). Matthew 5:17-19 has Jesus teaching:
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."
The above quote shows Jesus was delusional and believed not only that the Hebrew Bible was the Word of God, but that he was the Jewish messiah who was fulfilling Jewish prophecy which would usher in a new heaven and earth. Also, it's important to keep in mind what some of these Hebrew Bible laws commanded, such as the killing of gay men (Leviticus 20:13), the killing of wizards (Leviticus 20:27), the killing of witches (Exodus 22:18), the killing of Jews who work on the Jewish sabbath (Exodus 35:2), allowing Jews to own Gentiles and their children as slaves "for ever," (Leviticus 25:44-46), ad nauseum.
Matthew 25:14-30 has Jesus telling a parable that promotes the idea of God as being cruel, greedy and violent, just as the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament portrays God, and ends with the statement:
"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
It is not at all surprising that both the religious left and the religious right are able to use the Christian Bible to promote their opposing agendas. This has been going on for years. A major example of it was seen in the US Civil War. In the US Civil War the North used the Bible to attack slavery while the South used the same Bible to promote slavery. These facts show the truth to this statement from Thomas Paine that is found in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition: "...the Bible decides nothing, because it decides any way, and every way, one chooses to make it."
It's time to move beyond the delusion that we need to hold on to the ancient "revealed" religions/superstitions in the 21st century. Thomas Paine was correct when, in The Age of Reason, he called for a revolution in religion based on our innate God-given reason and Deism.
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